Pre Conflict Resolution or Precognitive Resolution

Greetings,
Long time Reader, first time poster. The Forge has always been an inspiration to my attempts at writing.

This is something I am working on with my “tarot-esque” style game. The idea is that the resolution of a conflict is resolved before the action so that the players will know if the character needs any situational modifiers to succeed.

This gives the “tarot-esque” style system more of a feel of determining the future than resolving the past.

Example

A character being chased by opponents comes to a ravine.

Traditionally the character would state the desired action then use the system to determine the resolution, pass or fail.

GM: The path ends at the edge of a deep ravine and you have less than a few moments before you will be caught.

Player: I jump the Ravine.

Resolution = fail

GM: You fail

This is where the GM has to make a decision on whether to let the player fall or create an alternative task in which the player may also pass or fail such as clinging on to the other side and making a climb task

Using a Pre Conflict Resolution would allow the player to make more judgments on what the character can and cannot do.

GM: The path ends at the edge of a deep ravine and you have less than a few moments before you will be caught.

Pre Con Resolution = fail

Player: I’ll never make that jump but it looks close. I use my staff to vault over (Insert situational modifier here such as +2 to jump) and barely make it to the other side.


In the first example, the player is dependent on the GM to alter the game world so that the character has another chance or option to resolve the conflict.

In the second example, the player is empowered to alter the situation so that the character can win the conflict.

The same idea applied to combat would offer both players, or GM and Player, more options. For example, a character who is about to be chopped down may alter his attack to be more defensive in nature.

This idea is still in it’s infancy but is something I am continuing to work on and I would like to open up some discussion on it.

This type of resolution is actually pretty common here at the Forge. We call it "Fortune-in-the-Middle" or "FitM" for short. The basic idea behind FitM is that conflicts are narrated after the dice are rolled. Sometimes, like your idea, people are able to use resources or other mechanics to modify the roll before narration.

It's quite successful technique.

Thanks for clarifying this for me timfire. I had read much about FitM before but looks like I didn't grasp it.

A quick search gave me this thread.

http://www.indie-rpgs.com/viewtopic.php?t=1163&highlight=fortune+middle
"Examples of Fortune in the Middle"

Which put it in better perspective.

Looks like it will work well indeed.